Originally Posted by GUWonder
They won't "decline to pull aside 'suspicious' looking 'middle-eastern' types"; they'll pull such people over anyway and then hide what they are doing by bothering non-"middle eastern" types to make it seem like they are not doing racist profiling; and when called out on racist profiling, they'll use the non-"middle eastern" types to make the numbers look good and defend their inherently wrong actions.
Agree with the second part but not the first.
In the months following 9/11 when random pullasides and gate checks were much more common (even without SSSS), there were all kinds of media reports from airport security workers of them being told from above
not to avoid intentionally extra screening for arabs or "middle-eastern-lookng" types even if they were "suspicious," because it would give the appearance of racial profiling and generally look bad. There were also stories that some checkpoints were given "quotas" of the
maximum number of arabs or "middle-eastern-looking" types they could pull aside over a given timeframe.
This was the same era when flight crews and elderly people were even more likely to be pulled aside because screeners would look like they were "fighting terrorism" but knew these groups were least likely to complain.
A problem with any racially-aware policy (law-enforcement, hiring, whatever) is that because of the sensitivity of the issue it becomes an excessive focus of the implementers, often to the detriment of the "non-protected" categories. I've often wondered how many times LEOs in districts accused of racial profiling conciously decide, "OK, it's time to pull over a white guy so my numbers look better," and then harass the next white guy that comes along for no reason other than his race.